The Verge’s latest concept for Rethinking the Lockscreen borrows some elements from tweaks that should be familiar to the jailbreak community but manages to introduce a few ideas we haven’t seen before. We’ll walk you through what’s new, and what you can have on your jailbroken phone today.

Here’s the deal: the iPhone’s basic lockscreen is limited by default. You’ve got a clock, your wallpaper, a bar that says “slide to unlock”, and a camera ‘grabber’ button. Maybe you have music controls on screen, and there could be a notification or two. It’s no surprise that the mostly-plain lockscreen has drawn attention from the jailbreaking crowd.

Lockscreen Card

Lockscreen Cards (left), Intelliscreen X (right).

First lets start with what we haven’t seen before–Brentcas’ unique idea is called the “Lockscreen Card.” Lockscreen Cards are widgets that occupy the top of the screen, right where the lockscreen clock sits now. Swipe your finger along the clock’s banner and it will switch to another widget, such as the weather or a maps screen. Each card can also have an expanded view, similar to what we already see with the music controls on the lock screen’s clock.

We’ve seen tweaks that allow for lock screen widgets, such as AnyLock and IntelliScreen X–tweaks that try to place many widgets on one scrolling page–but we haven’t seen a lockscreen widget that looks or feels like the Lockscreen Card concept. I’d love to see this as an actual interface tweak.

The Grabber

On the other hand, the suggestion for the Grabber is a no-brainer. The concept is the just ability to swap out the camera grabber with a different app. Jailbreakers can already have this feature in a number of tweaks including AnyLock and GrabberApp. This is a feature, like the ability to set a different default browser, that Apple should include in iOS but doesn’t. On its own, The Grabber concept isn’t remarkable.

Screenshot of GrabberApp.

Insistent Apps

Tying both these concepts together, though, is the idea of “insistent apps.” While you’d normally be able to set which apps will show up where on your lockscreen, when you lock your device with a certain app open, it may take over your lockscreen card or the grabber. (If you lock your phone when maps is open, your lock screen will open to the Maps card. If you’re receiving a Skype call, the Grabber could open a voice call instead of your camera.) This could be a good idea, or it could result in tons of annoying crapware and clutter, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a context sensitive lockscreen. This part of the concept (at least for the cards) would require developer input for each app, so we’re likely not going to see it in a Cydia tweak.

Would you like to see swappable context-sensitive widgets in the lockscreen? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

It has to be something different and better, because we know all of this tweaks since the beginning of iOS 5. And talking about lockscreen tweaks I really like video wallpapers and having videos whenever I receive a call too.

Techyy

I would love to see a concept like this come to cydia. The “lockscreen card” idea is awesome, even making it compatible with intelliscreenx aa stand alone tweak would be an option I think many jailbreakers would choose. Also, the idea of when locking the screen having the app you were in ie. maps,safari, music. And be easily cleared by swipe or home button press would be awesome as well. Great concepts! Hoping someone from the jailbreak community of developers!